Child actor asks you to ‘C the Difference’

Cory Nichols, 14, has raised over $13,000 and delivered 5,000 pounds of food through his not-for-profit organization

By Suzanne Kurtz Sloan For The Times of Israel

WASHINGTON (JTA) — After seeing the documentary “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island,” Cory Nichols enlisted his rabbi to find a way to use his upcoming bar mitzvah project to make a difference for struggling families in his Oceanside, N.Y., community.
Nichols contacted a local food pantry housed inside a neighboring church to see what it needed most.

He set a goal of raising $1,200 to stock the pantry’s shelves with $100 a month in food staples like peanut butter and jelly, tuna fish, pancake mix and cereal.

“I couldn’t believe that 150 families in my community use the food pantry,” said Nichols, now 14 and a ninth-grader at Oceanside High School on Long Island, as well as an actor who has appeared in several films. “There are probably kids at my lunch table eating food from the pantry. It made me want to do all that I could do to help.”

After a successful fundraising campaign in its first year, Nichols soon started the nonprofit “C the Difference: Cory Cares,” and in a little over two years has raised over $13,000 and delivered 5,000 pounds of food.

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New York Teens Teach a Lesson in Helping Terror Victims

Moshe Phillips and  Benyamin Korn for the algemeiner.com

They don’t have plush offices or secretaries or gala dinners, but a group of 15 year-olds on Long Island are providing an inspiring model of leadership for the rest of the American Jewish community.
Tenth graders at the Rambam Mesivta High School in Lawrence, New York, recently initiated an online crowd sourcing campaign, which has raised an astonishing $2.4-million for the families of the four American-Israeli rabbis, and the Druze police officer, who were murdered in a Jerusalem synagogue last month.

We were all horrified and saddened by the news of the Har Nof massacre. But most people quickly returned to their usual daily affairs. The grim reality of what the widows and orphans will endure for the rest of their lives didn’t attract much attention.

When the Rambam students heard about the massacre, they asked: What can we do? And then they did something – something that will make a real difference in the lives of the victims’ families. They can’t bring back the innocents who were massacred by Palestinian terrorists. But they can ease the pain of their widows and orphans, just a little.

Once the crowd-sourcing campaign began gathering momentum, the Orthodox Union recognized the importance of the students’ effort and began assisting it. Hopefully other Jewish organizations will do likewise.

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The Three Most Important Questions You Can Ask Your Teenager

by Michael Mulligan, Head of School, The Thacher School for The Huffington Post

According to the social scientists, the last of the millennials are now gracing our high school campuses. The Pew Research Center report on this cohort describes them as "confident, connected, and open to change." I agree. Technology is their metier. They embrace diversity like no generation before them. They seek to serve the dispossessed and the disadvantaged. They work to find green solutions to the environmental mess we have bequeathed them. In this regard, they are focussed and unrelenting: a good thing for all of us.

Beneath their energy and commitment to building a better world, though, is stretched, for too many, a fragile membrane that is easily punctured. We have raised a generation that is plagued with insecurity, anxiety and despair.

Former Yale Professor William Deresiewicz, in his fascinating and controversial book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life writes this of the millennials:

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Teens & Screens Part 3: Who Sees What Online

By Sue Scheff for The Canteen on MyJewishLearning.com


The following is the third in a three-part series on how to help safely navigate the world of social media with your kids from Sue Scheff, a mother, author, parent advocate, and expert in internet safety education.

Summer camp is not only a time to meet new friends and people, your children will have memories and experiences for a lifetime.  Many will want to capture them in photos and videos – especially in today’s digital world.

Sharing your summer experiences with friends and family is expected, however when it comes to the World Wide Web, precautions need to be taken.

Over-sharing is a common mistake that many people of all ages make on social media.

Prior to posting videos, talk to your child about things they need to consider before posting each photo and video:

•     Setting-up a private group for their camp group viewing only
•     Double checking their privacy settings
•     Thinking about who is in the photos/videos?  Will they mind their picture on a social media site?
•     Sharing selectively
•     Creating an online photo album entitled 2015 summer camp

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Teens & Screens Part 2: Cyberbullying

By Sue Scheff for The Canteen on MyJewishLearning.com

The following is the second in a three-part series on how to help safely navigate the world of social media with your kids from Sue Scheff, a mother, author, parent advocate, and expert in internet safety education.

Cyberbullying is a concern for all parents.  We can’t be with our children 24/7 and the fact is our kids spend more time in cyberspace than they do with us. The most common form of cyberbullying among tweens and teens happens with cell phones. We need to equip them with the knowledge to handle cyberbullies and prevent them from becoming victims.

Since your child either just came home or will be coming home from camp soon, let’s be sure they are well-prepared to know how report online abuse and, most importantly, know they can come to you if they witness it or are a victim of cyberbullying.

Going back to the study of Teens and Screens that I referenced in my last post, in 2014 cyberbullying tripled.  24% of tweens and teens lack knowledge on what to do in the event they witness online abuse or are a victim of it.

According to Cyberbullying Statistics for 2014, 52% of teens report having been a victim of cyberbullying. Sadly, only 33% of those victims have reported bullying to parents or another adult.  A recent European study showed that over half of teens view some level of cyberbullying as a normal part of online life. By having open and frequent face-to-face chats with your child about digital citizenship, hopefully we can eliminate this opinion of cyberbullying.

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Teens & Screens Part 1: Raising Smart Cyber-Citizens in Social Media

By Sue Scheff for The Canteen on MyJewishLearning.com

The following is the first in a three-part series on how to help safely navigate the world of social media with your kids from Sue Scheff, a mother, author, parent advocate, and expert in internet safety education.

Do you consider yourself a savvy digital parent? While your kids are away at camp during the summer, it can be a great time to get caught up on learning about the cyber-lives of youth today. The more you know, the more you can better communicate with your kids regarding their digital lives.

The results of a recent 2014 study by McAfee titled, Teens and Screens, should be a wake-up call for parents. Some of the staggering findings include:

• 59% of tweens and teens engage with strangers online
• Cyberbullying has tripled, yet 24% of the respondents admitted they don’t know what to do in the event of online abuse
• Tweens and teens are still over-sharing their personal information, with 14% admitting posting their home address

Exactly what do you know about your child’s online life? Most know about cyber-safety 101:

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Hacking Hanukkah to Design the Jewish Future

By Rabbi Charlie Schwartz on EJP

The epiphany came half way through the session. My design team, a rag-tag group of Jewish high school students, had already identified the centrality of food in creating powerful experiences with family and friends. Then, during a frenzied brainstorm, a jaunty ninth grader shouted, “Wait – there are no good Hanukkah drinks!”

Thus, after several iterations, the Flaming Hanukkah Milkshake was born: sixteen ounces of milk-chocolate deliciousness with a ribbon of strawberry jelly running throughout, served in a double-paned glass with ignited olive oil floating between the layers, and a nine pronged sparkler put in for good measure.

This design experience was part of a series of Hanukkah Hackathons run by the Brandeis Design Lab – a joint project of The Union for Reform Judaism, Combined Jewish Philanthropies and Brandeis|HSP. These sessions instruct teens in the methodology of Design Thinking and provide them with the tools to innovate Jewish life and practice. At first glance, the idea of a Hanukkah Hackathon seems kitschy, a mash-up of old words with new jargon. But the idea of hacking Hanukkah – that is, repurposing and/or refining it in ways not previously imagined – has ancient origins.

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Jteenleadership.org

Are you a teen looking to get involved in service activities?

J-Teen Leadership is a community service leadership development initiative for Jewish high school students who want to make a difference in the world today. What makes us unique is that teens plan and lead projects. Based in Westchester, we welcome teens from New York and beyond, of all backgrounds and affiliations. Through local service projects and hands-on service trips, with skill building in leadership, advocacy and philanthropy, we do our part to improve the world (tikkun olam). Our programs are empowering, collaborative and fun. At J-Teen Leadership, we know how busy high school schedules are so we tailor programming to manageable time commitments. And our work continues to be recognized with service hours and awards. With the help of  adult allies, we coordinate our efforts and make a difference. We hope to see you at an upcoming project. Get Involved!

Has the Bat Mitzvah Party Overtaken the Bat Mitzvah?

By Francie Arenson Dickman for Raising Kvell

I knew bat mitzvahs were a bad idea. I told my husband this in 2001, about 20 minutes after we returned from the hospital with our two new daughters and he said, “My parents want to know when the baby namings will be.”

I like to think of the baby naming as a “bris for girls,” a custom created by Reform Jews rather than God and therefore, in my mind, totally optional. So, over babies crying, I hollered as best I could—given the fresh incision across my abdomen—that there’d be no baby namings. Then, as I struggled to attach a newborn to each of my nipples, I added, “And there’ll be no bat mitzvahs either. So tell your parents not even to ask.”

But they did ask, and so did my husband, who typically asks for nothing.

“Why do you care so much?” I’d question.

Like Tevya, he’d answer, “Tradition.” Then he’d add, “Why do you?”

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Jewish teen among dozens of French girls joining jihad in Syria

Follow us on   By Lori Hinnant for Haaretz

AP - A French Jewish teenager is among the approximately one hundred girls and young women who have left France to join jihad in Syria during the past 18 months.

According to a security official who spoke anonymously because rules forbid him to discuss open investigations, these girls come from all walks of life. They include first- and second-generation immigrants from Muslim countries, white French backgrounds - and one Jew.

These departures are less the whims of adolescents and more the highly organized conclusions of months of legwork by networks that specifically target young people in search of an identity, according to families, lawyers and security officials. These mostly online networks recruit girls to serve as wives, babysitters and housekeepers for jihadis, with the aim of planting multi-generational roots for an Islamic caliphate.

While girls are also coming from elsewhere in Europe, including between 20 and 50 from Britain, they pose a particular dilemma for France. The country has long had a troubled relationship with its Muslim community, the largest in Europe, and investigators say its recruitment networks are well developed. A bill in France's parliament would treat those who join jihad abroad as terrorists liable to arrest upon return, despite the pleas of distraught families that their girls are kidnap victims.

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That Time I Became Too Religious For My Father

By Allison Josephs for Raising Kvell

When I first started exploring Jewish learning and observance in my late teens, all of my family and friends thought I had lost my mind. But there was one person who was especially opposed to my newfound interest–my father.

Oh, he wanted me to be Jewish all right (from the youngest age, my sisters and I understood intermarrying would leave my pork-eating parents sitting shiva for us); I just was not allowed to be too Jewish. So when I began observing Shabbos every week during my senior year of high school, replete with unscrewing the light bulb in the fridge and taping lights around the house (so I wouldn’t be left in the dark–literally), good old dad would follow my trail and screw-in and un-tape. No daughter of his would become one of them.

My father had treated “ultra” Hasidim from some of the most extreme sects when he was training to be a doctor in Manhattan and was convinced that I was on a similar path. “You’re becoming a zealot,” he would tell me over and over again, even though I was making small changes at a responsible rate and I had no intention of ever leading an extreme life.

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The Secret Jewish History of 'Gilmore Girls'

By Sigal Samuel and Anne Cohen for The Schmooze

Today is a big day. Today is the day we reconnect with Lorelai and Rory. Today is the day Netflix starts streaming all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls.

WE. JUST. CAN’T. EVEN.

The Gilmores themselves aren’t Jewish — Richard and Emily would gasp at the thought — but the show did give us such gems as the dancing rabbi, Kirk as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, and “Oy with the poodles already!” And those mandatory Friday night dinners at the parents’? Come on, they just scream Shabbat.

But more than that, there’s the theme song. Yes, that theme song.

Who knew it had a secret Jewish connection?

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The Jewish American teen who's making school buses 'green'

While still in school, Jonny Cohen started GreenShields, a project that aims to design an aerodynamic Plexiglass air shield that would cut buses' fuel use.

By Suzanne Kurtz Sloan for Haaretz

JTA - As a seventh-grader walking home in Highland Park, Ill., Jonny Cohen would watch school buses pass by and wonder if there might be a way to make them more energy efficient.

School buses are an “overlooked form of transportation,” says Jonny Cohen, now 19. “I like efficiency and for things to be efficient, and I have a passion for the environment.”

With the help of some friends and advisers at Northwestern University, he started the GreenShields Project to design an aerodynamic Plexiglass air shield for the front of the buses. The shield cuts the fuel use by buses up to 25 percent by reducing their drag.

“Taking something that already exists and modifying it just a little can make a big difference,” Cohen said. “We only have one earth and we can’t be wasteful.”

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A Fashion Week Bat Mitzvah Video Shoot

Stylish Westchester preteens steal the show from Marc Jacobs

By Stephanie Butnick for Tablet Magazine

New York magazine’s The Cut set out to uncover the identities of the pint-size preteens who captured the attention of the crowd outside the Marc Jacobs show Friday during Fashion Week while being filmed by a videographer. It turns out the gaggle of tweens were from Westchester, and were filming a video for pal Chloe Cornell’s bat mitzvah. Her mom picked everyone up after school and brought them to Manhattan for the shoot.

Clad in shirts bearing the Chanel logo—in this case repurposed to stand for ‘Chloe Cornell’—with similarly adorned hats and black sunglasses, the fashion-forward group is the latest entry in the canon of high production bat mitzvah videos, a trend which has some asking whether bat mitzvahs have become too glitzy.

Here’s what Chloe, who is designing her own bat mitzvah dress, told The Cut about their after-school outing.

Tell me about what you were doing outside of the Marc Jacobs show.

It’s was a video shoot for [the] montage for my entry video before I walk into my bat mitzvah. It’s going to play and everyone is going to see it.

Was there a script?

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Memphis Jewish teens explain what High Holidays mean to them

From The Commercial Appeal (from 2012)

Hear what these five teens have to say.  What do the High Holidays mean to you?

As the sun sets Sunday, Jewish people all over the world will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year of 5773. Rosh Hashanahh is the beginning of a 10-day period of high holy days that ends on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.We asked five local Jewish teenagers to explain what the High Holidays mean to them.

Noga Finkelstein, Baron Hirsch Synagogue

When I begin to contemplate the messages the High Holidays bring us as Jews, ideas immediately rush my mind. I reflect on the previous year, recognizing how to improve my actions and resume on my journey to becoming closer to God.

The High Holidays are a time to extinguish the hum of the computer vibrating as social networking sites flood the screens. Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites do not compensate for the way I feel when entering the synagogue and listening to the melodies sung so beautifully throughout the prayer service.

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My Plan to Give My Daughter a Unique Bat Mitzvah Isn’t Going So Well

By Yossi Fendel for Raising Kvell

My oldest daughter will be called to the Torah as a bat mitzvah this December. I have a bit of chip on my shoulder about it.

Actually, it’s not just her bat mitzvah that I’m cynical about, it’s the whole bat mitzvah “thing.” (I’m using “bat mitzvah” here to include bar mitzvahs too, of course.) As Patrick Aleph argued persuasively in Kveller last year, there are a lot of problems with this ceremony. Despite this, we’ve seen examples lately of young Jews who transform their b’nai mitzvah into something powerful. We just read last month about the young Jews in Chicago who are building a playground. There’s a young Jew at our synagogue who is riding his bicycle from Mexico to Canada to raise funds for the Sierra Club. But even without the grand, headline-making accomplishments, there is significant untapped potential for this rite of passage to be better reflective of the status-change it is intended to complement.

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Planting Seeds of Mideast Peace in Time of War

Can Israeli and Palestinian Teens Bond at Camp While Conflict Rages?

By Yardain Amronfor The Jewish Daily Forward
OTISFIELD, MAINE — “My name is Mustafa, and I am from Gaza,” declared the 16-year-old perched, however improbably, on a picnic table near the shore of Pleasant Lake, Maine. His backdrop — just days after sheltering from the Israeli mortars exploding near his home — was New England’s White Mountains. “I lived 20 days in third war. I come to Seeds of Peace camp to share my suffering.”

Despite his peach-fuzz mustache, Mustafa speaks with the responsibility of a foreign ambassador and in a way, he is one: He’s one of just two Gazans who made it out to this rustic camp setting during the recent war. And now he’s primed to participate in the latest annual gathering of children from Israel, the Israeli-occupied territories, nearby Arab countries and America in a privileged summer camp: an idyll of sports, games, good times — and intense, life-wrenching encounters with children from other groups whom many of them have been conditioned to see as mortal enemies.

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The Diary Of My Great Grandmother

by: Sophie Topping Zimmerman for Fresh Ink for Teens

Every day should be Holocaust Remembrance Day, according to the descendent of survivors.

The Holocaust was an essential part of my Hebrew school education. It was something that was discussed every year. We were urged to ask our grandparents, who came from Europe, about living through the Holocaust. Several people who survived the concentration camps come to speak to us in school. Recently, I realized that my generation will be the last to hear a survivor tell the story firsthand. As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors.

Yes, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of books containing the stories of countless survivors. Books such as “Number the Stars,” “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” and “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” are read worldwide. Yet these literary pieces — engaging and tragic — are still fiction. Reading a fictional story is not the same as hearing a true, firsthand account of someone’s life. The emotions depicted in a story cannot compare to the emotions conveyed in someone’s telling of their experiences.

It is essential to preserve the stories of those who experienced the Holocaust. Both of my father’s parents were young children in Europe during the war. They survived due to their parents’ foresight and the kindness of others. My grandfather’s mother, Sophie, my namesake, kept a diary of her life during the war. My siblings and I were given a copy of her journal when we started preparing for our bar or bat mitzvahs. It was truly amazing reading about her experiences and the things they had to do just to survive. Through her account, I learned about my family’s resilience. The connection I felt with the past was amazing.

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Mayim Bialik: Why I Wear My Jewish Star

By Mayim Bialik for Raising Kvell

Oh, Israel. What a month it’s been for you and me. I lost a lot of fans this month because of my love for you. But it’s OK. I love you more than popularity, even when you make me crazy. And even though I don’t always agree with Israeli policy, I’m still a Zionist.

With all that we have been through this past month, I truly, deeply, for the first time understood why Jews who previously hadn’t worn yarmulkes started wearing them in the United States after the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when an Arab Coalition led by Syria and Egypt attacked Israel on the holiest day of the Jewish year. As we had been for thousands of years, in 1973, Jews were being attacked simply for being.

In the middle of the conflicts in Israel and Gaza this month, and in the middle of the virulent attacks I was coming under on social media, I put on my Magen David–my Star of David necklace–and it strangely felt like putting on armor. It felt like a statement. Gold armor around my neck: the way I show that I am Jewish and that I am not afraid to be so.

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Today's Featured Ask the Rabbi Question: Suicide

In light of Robin Williams' suicide last week, many have asked what is the Jewish take on suicide. Here is a Jewish perspective from aish.com



A guy who works at the same company just committed suicide. Some people are saying that this is a terrible crime, while others say it's okay because he didn't harm anyone. Can help put this into perspective for me?

The Aish Rabbi Replies:

The first thing to know is that we don’t “own” our bodies. Our body – and our very life – is a gift, on loan from the Creator. We are entrusted to care for it and nurture it, and do nothing to shorten its lifespan.

Someone who commits suicide is considered a murderer. It matters not whether he kills someone else or himself. His soul is not his to extinguish.

Judaism's opposition to suicide is found in the story of Noah's Ark. After the flood, God says to Noah: “Your blood which belongs to your souls I will demand; from the hand of every beast will I demand it. From the hand of every man; from the hand of every man who is his brother will I demand the life of man” (Genesis 9:5).

The Talmud (Baba Kama 90b) learns from the first part of the verse, "And surely the blood of your lives I will demand," that one may not wound his own body. All the more so, he may not take his own life.

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Ancient Money Box from Second Temple Era Discovered Near Jerusalem –Tel Aviv Highway

By Anav Silverman for tlvfaces.com

Pottery sherds, or fragments, discovered by an Israel Antiquities Authority inspector several months ago, during extensive work by the Netivei Israel – National Transport Infrastructure Company, Ltd.
on the new Highway 1 project resulted in an archaeological excavation. A previously unknown settlement from the Late Second Temple period was discovered, as well as a rare hoard of coins that was found in one of its houses along the new highway connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The hoard, which was kept in a ceramic money box, included 114 bronze coins dating to the Year Four of the Great Revolt against the Romans. This revolt led to the destruction of the Temple on Tisha B’Av (the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av), 2,000 years ago.

“One of the significant points of the find is that all the coins were all dated to the same year and each have the same worth,” Pablo Betzer, one of the excavation directors of the Israel antiquities Authority told Tazpit News Agency. “The location of the find is also significant as it was found outside Jerusalem.”

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Tweens Ditch B’nai Mitzvah Parties to Build Playground in Chicago’s South Side

By Rachel Silberstein for Raising Kvell

The kids are alright.

Meet Marc Luban and Ariana Handelman, a pair of 12-year-old BFFs from Chicago who have decided to forgo the modern bar mitzvah party, often ostentatious affairs featuring celebrity performers like Christina Aguilera (rock on, Sam Horowitz), in favor of helping other kids their age. In a partnership with their temple, Anshe Emet Synagogue, and the nearby Bright Star Church, the 7th graders will design and physically build a playground to serve the Bronzeville community on the South Side of Chicago, which is plagued by high crime and has few safe places for children to play.

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U.S. dialogue camps for Israeli, Palestinian teens struggle through Gaza-Israel conflict

Challenging process is made even more so by events in at home.

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen for Haaretz
NEW YORK – Traveling to beautiful seaside San Diego from Jenin or Jerusalem would ordinarily be a huge treat. But right now, for Mariam, Ayala and other Palestinian and Israeli teenagers participating in the Hands of Peace dialogue program, being far from home is excruciating.

“It’s been a hard day for me,” 18-year-old Mariam, who is from a religious Muslim family in Jenin, in the West Bank, tells Haaretz in a Skype interview. “Reading posts on Facebook about children and people dying. My mom just called me. The fact that people are dying and no one is doing anything about it ...” Her voice trails off and she begins to cry quietly.

Mariam’s participation in one of Hands of Peace's programs is controversial in her community. “I come from a very closed-minded society about peace programs,” says Mariam, a computer engineering major at a Nablus college. After her first experience with the program, during the summer of 2012, she was accused by relatives of being “brainwashed.” Her name and those of other participants quoted here have been changed.

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Jonah's TBH Recycling campaign

A crowdsourcing project through Jewcer; does your child want to raise money for a mitzvah project?

The Jewish Innovation

I am an 11 year old who believes strongly that it is my duty as a Jew to help take care of this planet. Every year my Synagogue does a number of events off site (Our Purim Carnival, Seder in the Desert, Tashlich at the Beach and many others), but we have never had an organized recycling program. I want to raise enough money to start a program for these events and all those in the future.

The Impact

Jews have always lead the way in protecting our Earth. This is a small but easy step to help my community take better care of the environment. If I raise the money, my Rabbi will let me introduce it to the congregation and give a brief drash on why the Earth matters so much to the Jews.

What the money is for

I will buy reusable recycling bins, blue bags, and gloves. I will also print up signs to mark the recycling locations. Any extra money will be donated to my temple's food pantry





 


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When Ofir Ben Sheetrit sang on Israel’s The Voice, her high school suspended her, but the country went wild

By Liel Leibovitz for Tablet Magazine

Last month, when the new season of the Israeli reality show The Voice—the local version of NBC’s hit singing competition—debuted, no one expected extraordinary drama. Marching up to the studio’s stage, the eager contestants looked like the usual grab-bag of talent show aspirants: the frustrated actor, the high-school ingénue, the bartender who crooned to overcome her personal hardships, and so on.

Then it was Ofir Ben Sheetrit’s turn.

Ben Sheetrit—at 17, one of the youngest of the show’s more than 50 contestants—is a student at an Orthodox yeshiva for girls in Ashdod and the only Orthodox young woman in the competition. Before she stepped in front of the microphone, she briefly introduced herself. “I’ve loved singing ever since I was little,” she said. “I’m looking for a way to cultivate my talent.” One of the show’s producers asked her if religion would get in the way; many Orthodox Jews consider the public singing of women immodest. Ben Sheetrit smiled sweetly. “I think the Torah wants us to be happy,” she said. “It wants music to make people happy. I think you can combine Torah and music, and this is why I chose to come on the show.” With that, she started singing an Israeli classic, Ofra Haza’s “Od Mechaka La’Echad.”

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To be young, Orthodox and openly gay

Orthodox Jewish high schools in the United States try to balance concerns for their reputation and their students, as growing number of teens openly identify as gay.

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen for Haaretz

NEW YORK — Though he had lots of friends, Amram Altzman still felt alone at Ramaz High School. As a 16-year-old sophomore at the modern-Orthodox Manhattan institution, Altzman worried about what people would think, whether they would accept him, if they knew he was gay. “Being gay and being Orthodox just wasn’t something that was talked about. It was isolating,” says Altzman, now 19 and in college.

He told his closest friends first, then his parents. Before long, almost everyone at Ramaz knew that he was gay. While there were a few negative comments, Altzman felt accepted overall. At home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, however, it was a different story. There, comments were so routinely hostile that his parents moved the family to a different community, in order to take Amram and his younger siblings out of an environment they felt could alienate their sons from Judaism altogether. And while Altzman says that he was embraced by both his friends and his family, he wishes that Ramaz handled the issue of homosexuality differently, framing it not as a sin and a chosen lifestyle, but rather as an identity.

Like a growing number of students, the topic of homosexuality is beginning to come out at Orthodox high schools in the United States. Until very recently, the norm for gay Orthodox Jews was to come out in college or later. But for a few years now there has been a marked shift. Students at Orthodox high schools who identify as gay are increasingly pushing to not only make sure that they are not overtly bullied, but also wholly accepted and able to explore what it means to be both gay and Orthodox. Now that same-sex marriage is legal in 18 U.S. states, and American attitudes are becoming, in many places, far more accepting, the challenge to Orthodox high schools is growing.

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Andrew Garfield says Spiderman is Jewish

By Talia Lavin for JTA

Andrew Garfield, a British actor most famous for playing the iconic superhero in the most recent run of Spiderman movies, has given us a new Spidey revelation in advance of ‘The Amazing Spider-Man 2″: Peter Parker is totally Jewish.

“Peter Parker is not a simple dude,” the slender actor told Time Out London. “He ums and ahs about his future because he’s neurotic. He’s Jewish. It’s a defining feature.”

And as the New York Post points out, Parker grew up in historically Jewish Forest Hills, Queens, where he was a socially awkward science whiz — not atypical for a Jewish teen.

Garfield tried to allay fears that he was relying on stereotypes to categorize Jews.

“I hope Jewish people won’t mind the cliché, because my father’s Jewish. I have that in me for sure,” Garfield said.

Not mentioned by Garfield, but surely part of any Jewish Spiderman origin story, is the fact that Spiderman was originally created by Stan Lee – or Stanley Lieber – a legendary Jewish comic book creator. Lee’s conception of an orphaned teen whose moral struggles formed the crux of his story seems pretty Jewish to us. In some ways, Peter Parker comes of age when he’s snacked on by that radioactive spider. You could say it was his bite mitzvah.

Chicago Middle Schoolers Suspended Over 'Clash of Clans' Bullying

By JTA

Did Eighth-Graders Hassle Jewish Teen?

Several eighth-graders at a Chicago public school were suspended as part of an investigation of anti-Semitic bullying via the online game “Clash of Clans.”

The suspended students from Ogden International School of Chicago were identified as ringleaders and participants in the reported harassment of a 14-year-old Jewish student. Chicago Public Schools spokesman Joel Hood told the Chicago Sun-Times that they were suspended for one to three days.

The Jewish student told his mother several months ago that his classmates showed him photos of ovens and told him to get in, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

In recent weeks, the eighth-graders started a team for the online game called “Jew Incinerator.”

“Heil! Throw Jews into ovens for a cause. We are a friendly group of racists with one goal — put all Jews into an army camp until disposed of,” the team’s introduction read. The students concluded the introduction with “Sieg! Heil! — a Nazi salutation.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said in part, “The principal at Ogden International High School has worked in cooperation with the network and central office to foster a larger community dialog around cultural sensitivity and has taken the appropriate actions to ensure this is a teachable moment for our children.”

The school principal held a forum for parents on May 29, the same day that the eighth-graders made a field trip to the Holocaust museum in Skokie.

Israeli High Schoolers Win Again in Global Physics Competition

From The Algemeiner

Youngsters from the Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center in Beersheba, Israel notched an achievement on a global scale Wednesday by winning yet another prize in the “First Step to Nobel Prize in Physics” annual competition, widely considered the world’s most prestigious science prize for high school students.

Between 2007 and 2014, the Ramon Center has placed Israel as the world leader in prizes for physics research conducted by high schoolers. The center has won 45 total prizes during that period, leaving countries like South Korea, the U.S., and Russia far behind.

The Ramon Center operates in conjunction with physics teachers from across the Jewish state to identify the most gifted southern Israeli students. The students write their research work with the guidance of experts from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

This year, 10 of the best research projects were submitted to the prestigious U.S.-based competition, and on Thursday the students’ research projects were presented to the wider Israeli public for the first time.


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Reflections of a Day School Graduate, One Year Out

by Amram Altzman for newvoices.com

I've written before on my day school education and its different aspects, critiquing how it taught me (or perhaps should have taught me) to look at my history and my past; I’ve also offered what can perhaps be best described as a back-handed compliment to my Jewish education. Now, as someone who has been out of the pre-college Jewish educational world for almost a year, I have begun to think about the lasting impact that my twelve years of elementary and secondary Jewish education has had on me.

One the one hand, my back-handed compliment still stands: in high school especially, I was incredibly cynical, especially when it came to studying rabbinic legal texts. To a certain extent, I still am, even if I’ve elected to continue studying those very same texts as part of my higher education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In high school, however, I found it difficult to relate to the texts that I was reading — partially because the intricacies of how to build a sukkah and whether or not it can be built in the public domain, or who is guilty of murder in the case when a baby is thrown off a roof and lands on a person carrying a sword and dies, were not relevant to my life. Interesting to ponder and debate though these legal issues may have been, they had little effect on my day-to-day interactions and realities as a Jew.

Instead, one of the most formative years for my Jewish education, and, especially my seven years of elementary and secondary Talmud education, was in eleventh grade, when I had a teacher who took the tractate we were studying, connected it to Enlightenment thinkers and biblical and contemporary texts, and forced us to synthesize those texts in a way we had not been asked to do before. For the first time, I felt that the Jewish texts weren’t talking down to me, but talking to me. This was the first time studying Jewish texts meant something to me. The rabbis of the sixth century CE were not only in conversation amongst themselves, but with me and with Søren Kierkegaard and Immanuel Kant and with rabbinic commentators. It was then that I truly felt that the texts I was studying were Not In Heaven — not in the sense that they were immutable and everlasting, but in the sense that they mattered to me and had implications for me today.

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Tijuana, Mexico's Border-Crossing Jewish Teens

by Leah Falk for Jewniverse

You might think a New York City family is making a sacrifice by renting a second apartment so their child can attend one of the city's seven specialized high schools—but try driving your kid across the U.S.-Mexico border every day.

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Next Up For Amar’e Stoudemire: a Bar Mitzvah?

The New York Knick and Hapoel Jerusalem owner might also become a man

By Stephanie Butnick for Tablet Magazine
Amar’e Stoudemire, New York Knicks power forward, six-time NBA all-star, Jerusalem Hapoel part-owner, and Torah study enthusiast, might undergo that sacred Jewish rite of passage popularized by acne-ridden and braces-laden teenage boys: a bar mitzvah.

TMZ posted video footage of Stoudemire’s wife Alexis answering all sorts of invasive questions about Stat’s religious observance. Asked whether the 6’11 basketball player, who is also in the process of becoming an Israeli citzen, had been bar mitzvahed, she said, “We can always have one later on, you never know.”

The TMZ reporter, naturally, suggests a NBA theme for the party, to which Alexis replied. “And then you put him on the chair.”

Their four young children, Alexis added, will be b’nai mitzvahed as well.

Stat should be careful though—if we’ve learned anything from Michael Douglas’ hora-related injury at his son’s bar mitzvah, those parties can be dangerous.

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California School Asks 8th Graders To Debate Whether the Holocaust Happened

The assignment materials cited Holocaust deniers, and represent a gross failure of judgment—and historical awareness

By Deborah E. Lipstadt

After decades spent in the sewers of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, I don’t horrify easily. But yesterday I learned that a school district in Rialto, California, assigned 2,000 8th-grade students to write an essay on whether or not they believe the Holocaust was “an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme.”

Put simply, this is the greatest victory for Holocaust denial in well over a decade, if not more.

The language of the assignment is worth reading in full:

When tragic events occur in history, there is often debate about their actual existence. For example, some people claim the Holocaust is not an actual event, but instead is a propaganda took that was used for political and monetary gain. You will read and discuss multiple, credible articles on this issue, and write an argumentative essay, based upon cited textual evidence, in which you explain whether or not you believe this was an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth. Remember to address counterclaims (rebuttals) to your stated claim.

When you ask a Holocaust denier why Jews would go to such great efforts to create the myth of the Holocaust, nearly all have the same ready answer: Jews have created this myth in order to deviously exercise political power and enrich themselves. They will cite the two things it is commonly said Jews “got” out of the Holocaust—reparations, and the State of Israel. It’s classic anti-Semitism founded on the notion that Jews deviously access power and do virtually anything for monetary gain, an idea that can be traced to the New Testament’s depiction of Jews in relation to the death of Jesus: The Jews sold out the Messiah and caused great grief to billions of his future followers all for a few pieces of silver. (Never mind the fact that everyone in the story is Jewish, with the exception of the Romans—who were the ones who actually did the killing.)

Along with entries on the history of the Holocaust from About.com and the History Channel, they offered the students supporting “material” titled “Is the Holocaust a Hoax?” that was taken from a Christian site. The document cites the execution technology “expert” Fred Leuchter, a leading denier, and presents a “theory” that Anne Frank’s diary was forged. “Israel continues to receive trillions of dollars worldwide as retribution for Holocaust gassings,” the document continues. “Our country has donated more money to Israel than to any other country in the history of the world—over $35 billion per year, everything included. If not for our extravagantly generous gifts to Israel, every family in America could afford a brand new Mercedes Benz.”

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